UF Study: Household Size Changes More For Elderly Blacks Than Whites

April 19, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The comings and goings of children, grandchildren, relatives and “fictive kin” who are close to the family but not related create larger households for elderly blacks compared with their white counterparts, a new University of Florida study finds.

These additional household members can provide important sources of support for aging blacks who may need help caring for themselves, said Chuck Peek, a UF sociologist who led the research.

“There is no doubt that having other people live with you makes it easier to get care if you need it,” he said. “And having members of one’s social support network in the home is very likely to delay entry into a nursing home or other form of institutionalized housing.”

Keeping people at home saves the expense of nursing home care, and also lets them remain in a more comfortable and familiar environment where they can see friends and acquaintances at church, the grocery store, the post office and other places they are accustomed to going, he said.

Of the 1200 people in the study, more than one-quarter of elderly blacks – nearly 28 percent – reported some household fluctuations during a two-year period, compared with about 19 percent of older whites, said Peek, whose research appears in the March issue of the journal Research on Aging.

“The economic adversity that many of these (black) families face may be managed by pooling resources, including living with others for varying spells of time,” Peek said. “African Americans also tend to have poorer health, which makes it more difficult for them to live independently.”

Studies show blacks have higher rates of disabilities and most chronic illnesses, and they rated their health as being worse than did their white counterparts, he said.

The study, which compares racial differences in elderly living arrangements, was based on telephone surveys of 602 blacks and 598 whites 65 and older. The surveys were conducted every six months from 1994 to 1996. Although the research was done in four counties in North Central Florida, Peek said the results would likely not differ for other parts of the country.

Participants were selected from a larger study matching information from the census tract and phone book. The 30- to 45-minute survey included questions about the use of senior centers and home care, as well as sociodemographic information, including education, sex and household composition.

Blacks in the study were three times as likely as whites to share their household with a grandchild – 12 percent versus 4 percent. Also, 18 percent of blacks lived with a child, compared with 8 percent of whites, and 5 percent of blacks lived with other relatives, compared with 2 percent of whites.

One reason blacks may live with a broader range of kin and nonkin is they have less opportunity to get such help from a spouse, Peek said. Although 45 percent of elderly whites lived with a spouse just 31 percent of blacks did, reflecting whites’ greater odds of being married at older ages, he said.

Twice as married elderly blacks – 4 percent – lived with nonrelatives than did whites, he said.

“These fictive kin, or nonrelatives, are often treated like blood relatives, becoming emotionally embedded in the family’s life,” Peek said.

The biggest change in the households of elderly whites was the addition of an adult child, usually on a temporary basis, which occurred with 6 percent of unmarried and 4 percent of married elderly whites. Besides providing care for older relatives, sharing a residence also may help a child save money and receive other parental support after a setback, such as a job loss or divorce, he said.

Among older blacks, the most common change in family composition was a grandchild moving in, reflecting the modern trend for more grandparents to serve as parents or custodial grandparents, Peek said. This occurred with 8 percent of married blacks and 10 percent of unmarried blacks.

“The recent and dramatic increase in grandparent-led households has been attributed to numerous social trends that have disrupted families, including divorce, bearing children out of wedlock, growth of substance use, AIDS, physical and mental illnesses and incarceration,” Peek said, noting that black families bear a disproportionate burden of these trends.

Older adults who have difficulty with various personal and household tasks, such as cooking, grocery shopping and dressing, risk nursing home care, Peek said. “It’s these types of services or forms of assistance that people living in the same household can do for older adults,” he said.

Learning about household patterns will become more important as baby boomers age, he said.

“The older population is not only growing more rapidly as a segment of the population, it also is becoming much more diverse, with increasing proportions of Latinos and Asian Americans,” he said. “Understanding family decisions and other circumstances that play a part in living arrangements for different ethnic and racial groups in the older population is going to be a major issue in the future.”

Judith Hays, a professor in geriatric psychiatry and gerontological nursing at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at Duke University, said the research is important in helping to understand the advantages and disadvantages of generations living together. “With this study, Dr. Peek extends his previous ground-breaking work on cultural differences in late-life living arrangements,” she said. “The elasticity of black households where elders reside is a key resource for sharing material and emotional resources and avoiding unwanted institutionalizations.”

Other members of the research team were UF sociologists Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox and Barbara Zsembik; and Raymond Coward, dean of the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University.